Middle of the World City

La Ciudad Mitad del Mundo, Middle of the World City, is located at San Antonio parish of the canton of Quito, 26 km (16 mi) north of the center of Quito. The grounds contain the Monument to the Equator, which highlights the exact location of the Equator from which the country takes its name and commemorates the eighteenth century Franco-Spanish Geodesic Mission which fixed its approximate location.

The monument was built to commemorate the first Geodesic Mission of the French Academy of Sciences, led by Louis Godin, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine, who, in the year 1736, conducted experiments to test the flattening at the poles of the characteristic shape of the Earth, by comparing the distance between a degree meridian in the equatorial zone to another level measured in Sweden.

The yellow line, you can see in the photo, divides the 2 hemispheres.